Trona Pinnacles National Natural Landmark, California

The out-of-this-world formations of the Trona Pinnacles National Natural Landmark have been used as a backdrop in a number of science-fiction films. There are about 500 towers of various shapes that reach as high as 140 feet above the base. The formations are the weathered remnants of tufa (a form of calcium carbonate) towers created under water between 10,000 and 80,000 years ago in an ancient lake that’s now dry.

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Panoramas are one of the most fun and dramatic ways of capturing the Milky Way over a landscape, created by stitching multiple exposures together in software to capture a much wider field of view than you could capture in a single photo.